Big art fairs in attendance return: kicking off miart 2021 on Sept. 17

It is the first major Italian fair to return live, physically after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. So the appointment with contemporary art in presence is back, and specifically with miart, the international modern and contemporary art fair in Milan organized by Fiera Milano, now in its 25th edition and directed for the first time by Nicola Ricciardi. It will be held September 17-19, 2021, with a VIP preview on September 16. Five sections (“Established Contemporary,” “Established Masters,” “Emergent,” “Decades,” and “Generations”) will welcome 145 galleries from Italy and twenty foreign countries, plus a dedicated digital platform. In the pavilions of fieramilanocity_MiCo, established contemporary artists, modern masters and young emerging artists will alternate, with a path that the organizers announce is rich in dialogues, discoveries and rediscoveries from the early 20th century to the creations of the latest generations.

This year’s theme will be Dismantling the silence: the title is borrowed from the collection of verses of the same name by the Serbian-born American poet Charles Simić, fifty years after its publication. Special attention is therefore paid to the word “poetic” interpreted as a form of universal language. Accompanying the fair, therefore, will be a series of initiatives aimed at enhancing new dialogues between past and present, history and experimentation, and promoting the blossoming of new forms of communication between all the subjects that have always animated the Milan fair. The first of these initiatives was the And Flowers / Words editorial project that, over the past three months, brought together numerous personalities from the Italian artistic and cultural world, united by a particular interest in the written and spoken word, involving them in conversations held weekly on the fair’s digital channels. In continuity with this path, miart now presents Starry Worlds, an unprecedented proposal inspired by a poem mentioned during one of the conversations, namely For Memory (1981), by the American poet and intellectual Adrienne Rich (1929-2012). Animated by a similar desire to “put together, piece by piece, the starry worlds” (in fact, one line of the poem reads “Putting together, inch by inch the starry worlds”), miart involved several city institutions by asking the artists featured in the September exhibitions to share verses, quotations and fragments of poems that are significant or influential to their research and work. These will then be collected thus shaping a very special anthology that will also be in part a poetic map of the city of Milan.

To date, some of Milan’s leading cultural venues have been invited to participate in the Starry Worlds project, such as the Chiostri di Sant’Eustorgio with Alessandro Pessoli, Fondazione Furla and GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna with Nairy Baghramian, Fondazione ICA with Simone Fattal and Michael Anastassiades, Fondazione Pini with Elisabetta Benassi, Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca with Neïl Beloufa and Maurizio Cattelan, Fondazione Pomodoro with Nevine Mahmoud, Margherita Raso and Derek MF Di Fabio, Fondazione Prada with Simon Fujiwara, PAC - Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea with Luisa Lambri and Zehra Doğan, and Triennale Milano with Corrado Levi and Elena Rivoltini. Other civic institutions and city events will be added in the coming weeks. Also renewed are the collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo, which supports miart as main partner, and the partnership, for the ninth consecutive year, with the maison Ruinart, which will present for the first time in Italy, inside the fair’s VIP Lounge, a selection of works by British artist David Shrigley. For all info on the fair and how to visit, you can visit the miart website.

Participating galleries

About one-third of the 145 galleries participating in miart 2021 are international, hailing from 20 countries (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Cuba, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United States of America, Hungary, and Uruguay).

The 2021 edition will welcome the return of several international galleries including Clearing (New York, Brussels, Beverly Hills), Corvi-Mora (London), MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch (Brussels), Peter Kilchmann (Zurich), Lange + Pult (Zurich, Auvernier), Lelong & Co. (Paris, New York), Robilant+Voena (London, Milan, New York, Paris), SMAC (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Stellenbosch), Galerie Hubert Winter (Vienna), along with exciting new who for the first time have chosen miart as their stage in Italy, such as Piero Atchugarry Gallery (Miami, Garzón), Charim Galerie (Vienna), Edouard Simoens Gallery (Knokke) and QG Gallery (Knokke), among others.

Also returning are several Italian galleries including Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, L’Havana, Rome, Sao Paulo, Paris), Raffaella Cortese (Milan), Monica De Cardenas (Milan, Zuoz, Lugano), kaufmann repetto (Milan, New York), Francesca Minini (Milan), Massimo Minini (Brescia), Franco Noero (Turin), P420 (Bologna), Lia Rumma (Milan, Naples), Schiavo Zoppelli (Milan), Vistamare | Vistamarestudio (Pescara, Milan), ZERO (Milan). An important selection of galleries active in promoting modern and postwar art will include Cardelli & Fontana (Sarzana), Cardi (Milan, London), Cortesi (Lugano, Milan), Frediano Farsetti (Milan), Frittelli (Florence), Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G. A.M. (Bologna, Paris, Milan), Mazzoleni (London, Turin), Montrasio (Milan, Monza), Repetto Gallery (London), Gian Enzo Sperone (Sent, New York), Tornabuoni Arte (Florence, Milan, Forte dei Marmi, Crans Montana, Paris) and many others.

As a tribute to Milanese history and tradition, there will also be no shortage of auteur design, through the work and research of some of the city’s most prestigious entities active in this field such as Galleria Luisa delle Piane (Milan), Galleria Rossella Colombari (Milan) and Nilufar (Milan). Among the curated sections of the fair, Decades, curated by Alberto Salvadori, will explore the history of the 20th century through monographic or thematic stands presenting key moments of a specific decade, from 1910 to 2010. Special attention will also be paid to a new generation of gallerists thanks to a renewed Emergent section, curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, which will include exhibitors from 13 different countries-Austria, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Peru, Romania, Russia, the United States, Slovakia and Switzerland. Finally, once again, pairs of galleries will be called upon to stage encounters and comparisons between artists of different generations within the Generations section.

The Awards

Confirmed also for this edition is the Fondazione Fiera Milano Acquisition Fund, worth 50,000 euros, destined for works of art that will enrich the collection of Fondazione Fiera Milano, now housed inside the Palazzina degli Orafi, headquarters of Fondazione, which currently consists of 99 works representing different artistic languages.

In addition to the Fund, the main prizes have also been confirmed: the Herno Prize, born from the collaboration between miart and Herno and now in its sixth edition, will award a prize of 10,000 euros to the stand with the best exhibition project; the LCA Prize for Emergent, worth 4.000 euros, established in 2015 and born out of the collaboration between miart and LCA Studio Legale, is for the gallery with the best presentation within the Emergent section; the Rotary Club Milano Brera Prize for Contemporary Art and Young Artists, now in its twelfth edition and established in 2009 as the first award in the context of miart, provides for the acquisition of a work by an emerging or mid-career artist to be donated to the Museo del Novecento in Milan.

Pictured: a photo from the 2018 edition of miart.

Big art fairs in attendance return: kicking off miart 2021 on Sept. 17

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